In these last days of May, we pray the novena to the Holy Spirit (May 30-June 7), in preparation for Pentecost. And it’s useful to reflect on what the Holy Spirit did for the Blessed Virgin Mary, making her both Mother of Jesus and Mother of the Church. By this approach, we cap our honoring of Mary during her month of May. We honor the Holy Spirit, and we honor also all Christians who have taken seriously the work of the Holy Spirit after the example of Mary.
All of Mary’s greatness as a Christian is owing to the fact that the Holy Spirit came upon her, and that she lived in the presence of God, continuously aware of His presence in her life. Our Lady cooperated with the Spirit’s promptings in loving obedience to God’s Word; she daily renewed her fiat at the Annunciation. Mary the Virgin heeded the Lord’s plan for her and thus became fruitful.
Mary’s life was an ongoing Magnificat; she was a woman of peace and joy because she gave the Spirit of God free rein in her life. When she experienced the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit, she did not keep Him to herself; she immediately went forth to share that experience and its meaning, for she realized that a life in the Spirit necessarily involves service to others. So, not considering her own precarious situation, she went through the rough hill country to tend to her elderly and unexpectedly pregnant cousin, Elizabeth.
What does all this have to do with you and me? A great deal, for what happened in the life of the Blessed Virgin Mary can and must happen in our own lives. Each of us has received the Holy Spirit in Baptism and Confirmation. Have we done anything with the Spirit? Are we more peaceful, more loving, more joyous for having received those sacraments? If not, we have not activated the power of the Spirit in our lives.
Here’s a test to see whether you are a Spirit-filled person. It’s very simple: What have you done with the gifts the Spirit of God has given to you? Jesus said, “By their fruits you will know them” (Matthew 7:16). We know the fruit Our Lady brought forth, for every day we say: “Blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.” Are you possessed by God’s Spirit? Have you brought forth Christ to the world in which you live?
We have also celebrated Mother’s Day this month. Christian mothers find their inspiration and example in the Blessed Mother. In an era when motherhood is denigrated, it’s well to affirm the irreplaceability of the vocation of motherhood and thus the debt owed to each and every mother, not just our own. “The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world!”
One of the great recent confessors of the faith, Cardinal Joseph Mindszenty, confronting the depersonalization and utilitarianism of Communism, felt compelled to write a paean to mothers, worth recalling in our own day, which has replicated that self-same depersonalization and utilitarianism:
The most important person on earth is a mother. She cannot claim the honor of having built Notre Dame Cathedral. She need not. She has built something more magnificent than any cathedral – a dwelling for an immortal soul, the tiny perfection of her baby’s body. The angels have not been blessed with such a grace. They cannot share in God’s creative miracle to bring new saints to Heaven. Only a human mother can. Mothers are closer to God the Creator than any other creatures. God joins forces with mothers in performing this act of creation. What on God’s good earth is more glorious than this: to be a mother?
The great Jesuit poet, Gerard Manley Hopkins, composed a grand work, “The Blessed Virgin Compared to the Air We Breathe.” Interestingly, in Hebrew, ruach has a number of meanings: breath, wind, spirit – all of which come into play in Pentecost. Hopkins brings all this together in this sampling of his verses:
WILD air, world-mothering air,
Nestling me everywhere,
That each eyelash or hair
Girdles; goes home betwixt
The fleeciest, frailest-flixed
Snowflake; that’s fairly mixed
With, riddles, and is rife
In every least thing’s life;
This needful, never spent,
And nursing element;
My more than meat and drink,
My meal at every wink;
This air, which, by life’s law,
My lung must draw and draw
Now but to breathe its praise,
Minds me in many ways
Of her who not only
Gave God’s infinity
Dwindled to infancy
Welcome in womb and breast,
Birth, milk, and all the rest
But mothers each new grace
That does now reach our race—
Mary Immaculate,
Merely a woman, yet
Whose presence, power is
Great as no goddess’s
Was deemèd, dreamèd; who
This one work has to do—
Let all God’s glory through,
God’s glory which would go
Through her and from her flow
Off, and no way but so.
As we enter spiritually into the Upper Room with Mary and the Apostoles, we gain confidence in a fresh outpouring of the Holy Spirit on us and on God’s Holy Church – because we, like those first disciples, are united in prayer with the Mother of Christ, who is also our Mother in the order of grace.
An even more famous poem by Hopkins, “God’s Grandeur,” reminds us that “the Holy Ghost over the bent world broods / with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.” That’s the same Holy Spirit who, at the dawn of time, hovered over the abyss, bringing Creation from chaos; the same Holy Spirit who hovered over the Virgin of Nazareth, making her the Mother of her Creator; and yes, the same Holy Spirit who hovers over the elements of bread and wine, transforming them into the Sacred Body and Blood of Christ.
The founder of the Communion and Liberation movement, Monsignor Luigi Giussani, was right to encourage his followers to pray: Veni, Sancte Spiritus. Veni per Mariam (“Come, Holy Spirit. Come through Mary”).
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